I couldn’t help myself. I just had to share this one.

Look at the beer milk belly on this one! It’s farking huge! I suppose this outfit had a good run…after all, he’s worn it like four times already.

Time certainly flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe Xander is already 3 months old. He’s somewhere in the 16 pound range depending on poop output and milk input and he has already graduated to size 3 diapers. And by “graduated,” I mean pooped all over himself enough times in size 2s to warrant the upgrade.

His latest favorite thing is to be held up so he can get the feel for standing. He may be one of those babies who skips the crawling scene and moves straight to walking. We’ll see.

At the recommendation of my coworkers, we picked up a supportive baby chair called a Bumbo. Unfortunately Xander is still a bit on the small side and lacks enough head control to sit in it, but apparently it’s a lifesaver. So here he is next to it on me instead.

It didn’t take Xander too long to wander into the harsh reality of life. No, not paying taxes. He got sick for the first time at the tender age of 11 weeks old. From what I can gather, it’s just a cold, but man, there is a lot of snot going on here. Part of the problem is that he doesn’t really breathe through his mouth yet and the other part is that he hasn’t figured out how to blow his nose yet. You do the math. Needless to say, he gets mighty grumpy when his ability to breathe freely is impaired.

He is taking it all in stride though. When distracted from his snot issues, he still manages to go through his regular assortment of grins, coos, and smirks. I think that’s hilarious, but it seems to be saddening to his mom and grandma.

And as another first, it’s the first time he’s communicated a disease to another person. Target: mom. So now I’m shacking up with a pair of germ factories. So this is how he decides to pay her back for all that she’s done for him. Brilliant!

After the rim debacle a few weeks back, I decided it was the perfect excuse I needed to upgrade from 15″ rims to 16″. Replacing one Honda rim was ridiculously expensive, so I figured I might as well put a bit more money into the problem and get something more fun. The short search led me to Rota rims. They have a great balance of price and looks (since they make replicas of much more expensive rims). After debating for a very long time between the Mugen MF-8 and MF-10 knockoffs, I opted for the MF-8 replicas, a.k.a. the Rota Circut 8 16″x7″ rims in the I-ain’t-messin-around gunmetal finish. I had to get tires too so I went for the Kumho ECSTA ASX tires.

Oh yeah. That’s what I’m talking about! The only drawback (and it’s only really a drawback in the eyes of the wife) is that this has given me new motivation into investigating the world of springs and suspension to get rid of that sorry-looking gap in the wheel well. We shall see how that turns out.

Let’s face it, a P4 2.66mhz computer just doesn’t cut it these days. I built my old rig over 2 years ago so it was high time to get with the times. Two weekends ago, I got all the parts and assembled the following monster that will be obsolete in a few short months:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
• Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI X16 Motherboard
• BFG Tech BFGR79512GTXOCSINE Geforce 7900GTX 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
• Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24″ Widescreen LCD
• Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO 2GB Kit DDR433 XMS3500 ProSeries Memory
• Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 ATX12V 550W Power Supply
• 2 SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP2504C 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in RAID0
• Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU Cooler
• A grip of Aspire CF4SL-URED 80mm Red LED Case Fans
• Vantec VDK-80 Fan Vibration Dampener Kits
• Lian Li PC-61 Aluminum Case
• Plextor PX-712A DVD±R/RW Drive
• Lite-On LTR-52327S CD-RW Drive

Now I don’t have to see the “busy mouse cursor” any more. w00t! And this is my first venture into the world of AMD processors after living in the Intel world up til now. So far, so good.